Expanded New Orleans Arts Education Alliance initiative will help parents, schools, arts organizations and community leaders find programs and identify gaps
NEW ORLEANS – KID smART is expanding the capacity of the New Orleans Arts Education Alliance (NOAEA) to collect, map and share information about arts education opportunities across the city, strengthening a critical resource for understanding who has access to arts learning — and where greater investment is needed.
NOAEA, a citywide initiative operated by KID smART, maintains New Orleans’ only centralized arts education data hub. The expanded initiative will build on existing data collection and mapping efforts to provide a clearer picture of arts education access across public schools and communities, helping identify gaps, inform partnerships and support better decision-making.
For KID smART, which has worked for more than two decades to expand access to high-quality arts education, the Alliance represents an important opportunity to address the systemic challenges that individual organizations cannot solve alone.
“KID smART knows firsthand how transformative arts education can be for students, teachers and schools,” said Elise Gallinot Goldman, executive director of KID smART. “But we also know that access should not depend on where a student goes to school or whether a particular connection happens to exist. NOAEA gives our city a way to look at the bigger picture, understand where the needs are and work together to create more equitable opportunities for every student.”
New Orleans joined the Kennedy Center’s national Ensuring the Arts for Any Given Child initiative in 2017, establishing NOAEA through a collaborative citywide planning process. In 2023, the NOAEA governance committee asked KID smART to assume full responsibility for operating the Alliance, renewing its focus on data, connection and communication and advocacy.
The expanded data hub is a cornerstone of that work. By bringing information about arts education programming into one centralized resource, NOAEA can help schools identify potential partners, arts organizations understand community needs, funders make more informed investments and policymakers see where disparities in access persist.
The initiative also positions NOAEA to conduct research examining the broader impact of arts education, including its relationship to student achievement, social-emotional development, workforce readiness and well-being.
“Arts education is too important to leave to chance,” Brooke Pickett, director of strategic partnerships at KID smART said. “This work is about building the shared infrastructure that allows our entire arts education ecosystem to work smarter, collaborate more effectively and ultimately give more New Orleans students the opportunity to experience the arts.”
The expanded NOAEA data and research initiative will complement KID smART’s direct work in schools while helping advance a broader vision: arts education as an essential part of every public school student’s education, not a privilege available only to some.
To access the newly expanded data hub, visit explore.avela.org/kidsmart.
About KID smART
Over the last two decades, KID smART has collaborated with more than 40 New Orleans public schools to blend the arts into academic lessons to make classrooms more effective and joyful places to learn. Through full-year artist residencies, students in KID smART Creative Schools prove to grow academically, artistically, and emotionally. KID smART also partners with national thought leaders, including Harvard’s Project Zero Classroom, to incorporate best practices in arts and education into its program model. The KID smART Center for Arts & Education, provides a permanent home for free and low-cost arts education in the Bayou Road/7th Ward Neighborhood.